17,000 of you spoke to us, and we're listening.

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Earlier this year we asked you, esteemed readers, to take our most recent survey and share your thoughts on how we are doing. This has been something of a yearly ritual for us, and it's one of the most important things I consider when making decisions about the direction of the site and what things we need to work on. We do get three other critical kinds of feedback: traffic analytics, reader comments, and feedback from our peers in the industry, but we particularly value our surveys because so many of you are generous with your time. This year, nearly 17,000 people took the survey! As we look at the results, I'll share some of my thoughts on the data.

Reader behavior

One of the reasons that we take the survey so seriously is because it's our core audience that takes it. More than one-third of the respondents visit more than twice a day, and 85 percent are daily visitors. These are people who know us. As it turns out, most of them have known us for a very long time.

A quarter of our audience has been reading us since 2005 or before, with 15 percent saying they've been with us for a decade or longer. Considering that our audience is approximately five times the size it was ten years ago, we feel lucky to have retained so many readers. But we’re also excited that we have even more readers who have joined us in the last five years and have stuck around.

Who you are

This time around, we wanted to ask more questions about who you are. Most of you work in a computing field, but there is a lot of diversity in what you do. Fifteen percent of you are IT decision makers (i.e., director, CTO, manager, etc.). Thirty-three percent of you work in IT, while 21 percent of you work in computer-intensive fields outside of IT (i.e., developer, CAD/design, medical technology, etc.). Twenty percent of you said that you work extensively with computers, but not in a specialist role. Finally, nine percent of you said that computers are not a critical part of your professional life (mostly students, but not exclusively).

When we asked specifically about job titles, there was a big surprise. Fifteen percent of you said you were developers, and this surprised nearly everyone on staff. We were not surprised to see 5 percent of respondents identify themselves as CTO/CIO, nor with 16 percent being systems engineers. But we were shocked to see that 4 percent of you are lawyers, 3 percent of you are professors, and 3 percent of you are professional scientists. Eight percent identified themselves as systems administrators, while 7 percent identified themselves as support technicians. All in all, you’re an incredibly technical bunch.

You're also surprisingly entrepreneurial. Thirty percent of you have started your own company, and eight percent of you have done it more than once. Forty percent of you directly invest in the stock market, which was less than I would have guessed.

But enough about all the work stuff. We also wanted to know what you do for fun. This data comes out nicely in chart form, and it carries a few surprises, too.

I was happy to see that 80 percent of you love books. Cooking came in surprisingly high, but it was no shock that 73 percent of you enjoy playing video games.

Adults play video games, particularly adults who are technology professionals, which often comes as a surprise to those outside the tech world. That high percentage is something that has long confused statisticians who note that Ars has an incredibly high index of IT professionals (stemming from third-party studies of our audience by the likes of comScore and others). I believe it is largely a generational thing. Most of the tech people I know in their 30s enjoy gaming, while there are few in the tech world who are older than 45 for whom I would say the same. This isn't to say that everyone who enjoys gaming spends 30 hours a week doing it or that they necessarily do it on a console. But you can see from the chart above that at least for our audience, gaming rivals any other form of entertainment.

There were also several notable write-in responses, many of which necessitated a facepalm because we left them off the official list. They include 2 percent for photography, 3 percent for programming, 1 percent for gardening, and 1 percent for shooting. I was also surprised to see that 2 percent of you say you love to ride motorcycles. Please, please watch out for the crazy drivers (I used to ride a motorcycle in college).

Ars report card

Now we get to the part that matters most, namely your opinions on how we're doing. Many of you wrote in to complain that we didn’t ask about science and tech policy coverage, which clearly many of you love. In retrospect, we should have asked, but we’re always wary of asking too much and driving participation down. Rest assured, we’ll ask again in the future. Now, to the report card:

Overall, I see a lot to be proud of and grateful for here. You are a critical audience, and while I was surprised at how many of you were undecided on some of these questions, in every instance the majority of you expressed confidence in what we are doing. I suppose it should not be a surprise that 91 percent of you feel that we deliver the most important technology news. Most of you taking the survey are clearly invested in the work that we do.

When it comes to the site redesign that was unveiled in 2012, I was very pleased to see that 75 percent of you approve of it. It also appears from our analytics that most of the design decisions we made have been worthwhile. Of course, design is an ongoing process, but this data confirms that we are headed in the right direction, despite the fact that we know some of you sincerely do not like it.

Seventy-five percent of you believe that the recent increase in product reviews has been great. A little less than 20 percent are undecided on the matter, and I'll be straight with you: we have a lot of work to do in this area. Traffic on our reviews is strong, and comments are typically positive. But we know that there are differing expectations for what the reviews should contain, and we continue to search for the right formula for Ars. But the data shows that we’re making the right decision to expand further into this area.

I'd also like to address our renewed attention to Android. Seventy-three percent of you agree that it is been a good thing, with only 5 percent of you disagreeing. Here, too, there is work to be done, but this is a clear mandate that we need to stay focused on this area.

Sixty-five percent said that our Microsoft coverage is best in class, with a big portion undecided on the question. Many of you may recall that we made specific changes over the past few years, bringing considerably more focus to Microsoft. In the recent year we have done more long-form reporting on Microsoft than any other company. I think it is also fair to say that we have done more in-depth work in this area than just about any other site. We not only dove deep into Windows 8, but we had the most complete coverage of the new version of Office, and we continue to be one of the few sites that pays considerable attention to Microsoft's other ventures, including Server, Exchange, and others.

When it comes to Apple, 75 percent of you say our coverage is best in class, and I must admit to being pleasantly surprised when I saw such high satisfaction. That isn't because I don't believe the Infinite Loop team doesn't do fantastic work. It's just that complaining about Apple coverage at Ars is something of a hobby horse for a vocal minority of readers. Curious, I cross-checked this data with the data on how long people have been reading Ars. As it turns out, the longer someone has been reading Ars, the more likely they are to agree or strongly agree that our coverage here is fantastic. And that includes people who were around back in the days when I was bashing the iMac and making fun of Mac OS X Server. Ah, the good old days.

We also asked you if you thought that our gaming coverage was highly valuable. When Ben left in early 2012, many of you (and us) felt as though we had lost a family member. We also knew that Ben’s unique style and personality was not going to be reproducible. So Ben and I discussed possible replacements, and our current gaming editor was at the top of Ben's list. Almost a year into Kyle Orland's work here, 57 percent of you find his work valuable, while 26 percent of you are undecided. 17 percent do not presently find our gaming coverage to be highly valuable, but here I must note that this is the same percentage that we saw when we asked the same question 3 years ago. The difference between now and then is an increase in undecided respondents, which means we have more work to do in this department—but it is by no means suffering.

We also took the opportunity to ask about our new comment voting system, which remains both controversial and highly utilized. The results are very clear: 68 percent of you believe that it is a real improvement, while 26 percent are undecided. Only 6 percent disagree, which as you see below is reflective of an extremely small minority who does not like the system.

Last but not least, we asked how the new post voting system has changed your use of the site. Analytics show that commenting on the site has increased and that voting is a very popular activity. But how does our core audience feel about it? The graph pretty much tells the story (let me note that 48 percent of respondents said that they do not use the commenting system presently and never have. They are excluded from the graph). 0.6 percent of you stopped using the comments as a result, and 1.8 percent say that you use the comments less. Compare that to 3.6 percent who say that they started using them as a result of the change, and 12.5 percent that say they use them more as a result. It’s a 16.1 percent gain versus a 2.4 percent loss. The biggest group of users, of course, say that they continue to use the comments as they always have.

I will have a great deal to say about the comment voting system and its future at Ars in the near future.

In the end, we are grateful that 81 percent of you believe that Ars is currently better than it has ever been. The site is coming up on its 15th birthday. Nothing is the same 15 years after it is born, and this website is no different. Some things have remained the same, particularly the fact that we have never strived for feined neutrality, we’ve always embraced long-form reporting, and we put the community at the center of our work. We’ve also continued to focus on what we collectively believe are the most important or interesting issues in tech, even when that puts us at odds with vocal minorities in the community.

Again, we are extremely grateful to have such an amazing audience. And to the nearly 17,000 of you who took 10 minutes of your time to share your views with us, thank you very much. No one survey, chart, or poll can ever be a deciding factor at a publication as diverse and complex as what we have built here. But as I look back at 2012—which saw double-digit growth across all site metrics—I can't help but feel that this survey is a big vote of confidence for us, while at the same time giving us opportunities to think about what we might do differently in the future. We all look forward to doing an even better job for you in 2013.

Promoted Comments

Yours is the only site I really recommend to my friends, because it is my preferred balance of technical knowledge and ability to write. 50-page reviews of sound cards are boring, but so is 80 blog posts a day that pretend to be excited about everything in the consumer electronics world. I trust Ars to generally give me the "need to know" stuff, with some odd shit mixed in.

Of course, I don't like every story you do, and I sometimes think you smother topics that are just not interesting to me. But I'm a big boy, and know how to scroll to click away.

I did take the survey and was one of the "undecideds" on the gaming question. There's just not enough PC gaming coverage on Ars anymore, and that's where I do most of my gaming. I think reviews of console games should also touch the PC versions if they are available. I will always chose PC over console if I can!

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Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher

Anyway, I'm glad I can open the comments in the forum layout so I don't have to look at the votes unless something gets so severely voted down it gets spoilered. Monitoring troll-voting is not what I read the comments for. Posts like this one are.

[edit]Which, I hasten to add, if nothing else sparked further, very informative discussion on the topic it was posted.

This is my no. 1 site for tech. I don't work in related fields, but I enjoy learning and lurking around. Fantastic job guys! The comments section here is the best I've ever dealt with. It truly is above and beyond any other site I frequent.

The comment voting is what helped push this site to #1 on my reading list. Being able to quickly scroll down the comments and cherry pick things increases the time I have to read articles and do other things. When I go to the other sites like The Verge, etc.. and just see nested comment madness, I give up quickly. Definitely doesn't make me feel as vested in the site.

Yours is the only site I really recommend to my friends, because it is my preferred balance of technical knowledge and ability to write. 50-page reviews of sound cards are boring, but so is 80 blog posts a day that pretend to be excited about everything in the consumer electronics world. I trust Ars to generally give me the "need to know" stuff, with some odd shit mixed in.

Of course, I don't like every story you do, and I sometimes think you smother topics that are just not interesting to me. But I'm a big boy, and know how to scroll to click away.

I did take the survey and was one of the "undecideds" on the gaming question. There's just not enough PC gaming coverage on Ars anymore, and that's where I do most of my gaming. I think reviews of console games should also touch the PC versions if they are available. I will always chose PC over console if I can!

When you say you were surprised by the number of "undecided" votes, a large part of those is probably people who have no interest in the topic, be it Microsoft or Apple or video games. It's not necessarily a sign of displeasure, just one that shows different people have different interests.

I particularly like that you take the time to go over the results with us and comment on them. Most other sites that conduct these surveys usually just keep the data to themselves. As a long time visitor have not always agreed with some of the changes, overall the quality keeps me coming back and makes Ars one of the few sites I recommend unconditionally to my friends and acquaintances.

Even though there wasn't a science question on the survey, if you have comments on that part of our coverage, please leave them here - i'll scan these at least once a day.

I rather miss the "Weird Science" column, even if, perhaps, it wasn't the most useful column. It is always rather entertaining to see what crazy things others are researching.

Besides that, I think the science coverage has done a decent job bringing up some of the potentially more important discoveries, and does a good job trying to explain them for those in other disciplines.

When you say you were surprised by the number of "undecided" votes, a large part of those is probably people who have no interest in the topic, be it Microsoft or Apple or video games. It's not necessarily a sign of displeasure, just one that shows different people have different interests.

which is exactly why I voted undecided several times. I didn't follow something closely enough to have an opinion and I'd rather not skew the data.

I rather miss the "Weird Science" column, even if, perhaps, it wasn't the most useful column. It is always rather entertaining to see what crazy things others are researching.

Besides that, I think the science coverage has done a decent job bringing up some of the potentially more important discoveries, and does a good job trying to explain them for those in other disciplines.

Even though there wasn't a science question on the survey, if you have comments on that part of our coverage, please leave them here - i'll scan these at least once a day.

I rather miss the "Weird Science" column, even if, perhaps, it wasn't the most useful column. It is always rather entertaining to see what crazy things others are researching.

Besides that, I think the science coverage has done a decent job bringing up some of the potentially more important discoveries, and does a good job trying to explain them for those in other disciplines.

Yes weird science was great, can we have it back?

I really liked your green tech coverage (e.g. hybrid cars) so more of this would be great.

When you say you were surprised by the number of "undecided" votes, a large part of those is probably people who have no interest in the topic, be it Microsoft or Apple or video games. It's not necessarily a sign of displeasure, just one that shows different people have different interests.

which is exactly why I voted undecided several times. I didn't follow something closely enough to have an opinion and I'd rather not skew the data.

Same for me as well. If the site is concerned about the numbers of undecided voters, they may want to split out "undecided" from "no opinion" in future surveys. I don't generally read any Microsoft, Apple, or Android articles unless they happen to directly pertain to products I was considering buying or court cases that deal in an area I'm interested in (generally copyright or occasionally security). Since those articles are specialty areas for those three products, I will generally have no opinion/interest in the rest. This is nothing against the authors of the articles at large since I will generally read other articles by those same people.

So yeah, to make this short (too late), please split out those answers moving forth and I think that will help give better areas of interest breakdown as well as readership numbers for those article areas. Personally, since I voted those for the "no opinion" reason, I fully expected my answers on those categories to be ignored since I was not the target demographic. This would make that process easier for the data compilers in the future.

Games are more difficult to be objective about than the newest phone or OS and they tend to require a lot more time to form an educated critique about. I feel that the reader response to gaming coverage at Ars reflects this inherent difficulty more than it does the ability of Mr. Orland and other game writers.

I have been following Ars for 5 years now and this is my first comment on this site...

Great job Ken & Team! You guys have been my favourite source for all things tech. The objectivity in your articles is unparalleled in Tech Journalism space, particularly when it comes to coverage on Apple and Microsoft.

Keep up the good work!

P.S: It would be great if you featured an article or two on music controllers once in a while :-)...

Oh, sorry, but I just had another thought: maybe in future surveys it might help (or at least be worth trying) by having people rate the types of articles that are presented (e.g.: How do you rate the coverage on Ars of computer security issues? Or: How do you rate the coverage on Ars of hard sciences issues?). It might help to see what the numbers are on the audiences attending each different area of articles to help point what direction the site should focus on or pare back on.

Piece of advice from a dashboard designer: Never use pie charts. They are not good for conveying information, especially comparative ones. The other graphs were great, especially the bar charts that you had the insight to order. Good work and thanks for sharing the survey results with us.

With regard to the comment system, it's unclear from a user interface perspective whether the up-down arrows should be used for judging the constructiveness of a comment versus the agreeability of a comment.

When you say you were surprised by the number of "undecided" votes, a large part of those is probably people who have no interest in the topic, be it Microsoft or Apple or video games. It's not necessarily a sign of displeasure, just one that shows different people have different interests.

which is exactly why I voted undecided several times. I didn't follow something closely enough to have an opinion and I'd rather not skew the data.

Thank you both for this. It's important to remember, not everyone reads everything! Makes sense.

Anyway, I'm glad I can open the comments in the forum layout so I don't have to look at the votes unless something gets so severely voted down it gets spoilered. Monitoring troll-voting is not what I read the comments for. Posts like this one are.

[edit]Which, I hasten to add, if nothing else sparked further, very informative discussion on the topic it was posted.

Heh.

Since registering here, I have:

Graduated from college

Met, dated, and married my wife

Bought my first cell phone

Worked for four companies

Bought four cars

Lived in two cities

Bought a house

Ars has been part of my daily routine for my entire adult life, and I expect it will continue to be so for at least as long as Ken is running the show.

The Ars community is boisterous, cranky, crass, and unscrupulous. It is also generous, tight knit, intelligent, and well informed. This is the community I turned to on 9/11, and it's been the community I've turned to for advice when faced with more decisions than I can count, ranging from buying a house and courting my wife to selecting a cell phone and choosing a good steak joint when travelling.

Ars is the only source of news I check literally every day. It has informed my opinions on a wide array of topics, and brought me 180° away from my old opinion on a few. Nowhere else on the web have I found such a consistently thorough, educated, informative, and digestible source of information. Ars excels at presenting issues which are complex, technical, or both in a way which respects the readers' intelligence while acknowledging that many are not subject matter experts.

I'll wax as nostalgic as anyone for the good old days of white on black, Celeron overclocking, black papers, CPU Theory and Praxis, Caesar and Hannibal, et cetera. But that site in today's world wouldn't work any more than kuro5hin does. Ars has grown in the ways it should have, stayed true to itself in the ways it needed to, and has kept me a loyal, happy reader - even a rabid fan - the whole time.

Congrats to you, Ken, and to all the staff current and previous who helped bring the site to where it is today.

I first became aware of Ars after enjoying some Siracusa in-depths on new iterations of OSX; I finally paid for a subscription after Nate Anderson's excellent HBGary saga.

I too, miss Weird Science — but other things have improved in that time. It's been my perception that Ars has worked hard to build a female perspective on technology. Jacqui has been staffing the Apple section as long as I've been around (thanks), but having Florence, Casey, and Megan join the staff as regular contributors / editors has improved the well-roundedness of coverage.

Ars remains one of the best-of-breed technology sites. Along with The Verge, Ars is one of the two technology news sites I visit very regularly (multiple times per workday). The thoughtful long-form commentary and explorations of science, technology and their intersection are what keep me coming back.

The comments and discussion remain well above average (a category where The Verge does not excel).

I come here for the long form reporting. I know that I can find long, detailed, well researched, and factually correct articles here. In addition, you are responsive to criticism and are willing to listen to your readership.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it would be that your readership considers gaming the weakest element of Ars Technica.

The data is incomplete in that regard. We didn't ask the same question of every section of the site.

Quote:

you need to make a change in Ars's gaming coverage. If you're not sure what people are dissatisfied with, ask. We are not what you would call "shy". And many of us have not been for the last year. In the Opposable Thumbs comments or in GESC.

I appreciate the science coverage done by Ars. I have not found any other site that covers it in a sufficiently intelligent manner without going into information overload territory (both in number of articles and content of the article).

Regarding the answers to the gaming coverage, I can only say that I am not surprised. Even when Ben was running that section, it wasn't amazing (although I personally thought it was a lot better). Kyle seems to miss major points that I find important in a game, and regularly skips covering many games I feel are important. I also personally find Kyle's writing style to be boring. It feels like he has no passion at all for the games he is reviewing (even the well reviewed ones). He is not terrible, but his coverage feels like you just plucked some random guy off the street with an english degree and a game console. Hire an additional writer or take-on more freelance reviews (assuming a strong editing hand).